Uruguay has become the first country in the world to legalize both the sale and production of marijuana. President Jose Mujica has championed the measure as a way of combatting the illegal drug industry that has decimated parts of Uruguay. READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/rtvyjn
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Over the past six months, researchers have conducted a survey encompassing hundreds of dispensary owners, medical cannabis retailers and industry moguls has successfully estimated that in 2013 alone, more than $1.43 billion worth of legal marijuana will be sold nationally. The report projects that marijuana sales will raise up to 64% within the next year, surpassing the global Smartphone market at just 46% from 2012 to 2013. For what is proving to become the fastest growing market in U.S. history, it seems a national debate may soon be in order for the long overdue rescheduling of marijuana as a schedule I substance.
In a Gallup poll conducted just last month, 58% of Americans were in favor of national legalization of marijuana. Without government given grants to researchers, solidifying knowledge into fact has been an incredibly challenging, if not daunting task. Several researchers have previously mentioned that earning government grants for furthering marijuana research is truly the most difficult part in gaining the necessary acceptance to continue conducting studies. However, If the research is posed by researchers as directed toward finding a positive correlation between the “gateway drug” theory and marijuana population increase, government grants are given without any qualms.
The conundrum is that debunking such theories and conducting scientific research regarding marijuana’s medical benefits would inevitably be a means for a national reform of the drug itself. Under its current draconian scheduling, marijuana is listed as havingabsolutely no accepted medical use. Not to mention it is in the same category with heroin, LSD and ecstasy.Schedule I drugs are, by definition, “the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules.” A national reform would acknowledge a governmental recognition of marijuana as medicine. And with a government particularly bent on keeping marijuana illegal under federal law – it is no wonder further research has not been conducted. We live in a nation of skeptics; swayed toward one way or another, by substantial documented evidence. So for the other 42% of the country, lack of documented research is swaying them toward the offense.
A psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. J Michael Bostwick, said the rigid classification of marijuana was written as such for primarily political grounds, and has thus far ignored over 40 years of scientific research, which has shown that cellular receptors for marijuana’s active ingredients are indeed present throughout the body.
Steve Berg, the former managing director of Wells Fargo Bank and editor of the report, theSecond Edition of the State of Legal Marijuana Markets, said, “Cannabis is one of the fastest-growing industries. Domestically, we weren’t able to find any market that is growing so quickly.” He went on, “Entrepreneurs and private investors are flocking to cannabis markets.” When it comes to big business, Berg said, “Those who really understand market dynamics will reap large rewards.”
In 2014, both Washington and Colorado will implement laws permitting pot sales to all adults, which Berg has pointed out, will undoubtedly account for a significant growth in the marijuana market. Colorado is estimated to have an additional $359 million brought to its already booming market. Berg’s report predicts that 14 additional states will legalize marijuana for adult recreational use within the next five years, establishing a potential 10.2 billion dollar marijuana market by 2018.
Perhaps no war has failed quite as spectacularly as the War on Drugs. Trillions have been spent around the world, millions arrested, and yet drugs have never been cheaper or more accessible than they are now. Is prohibition still a valid strategy for dealing with cannabis, one of the world’s favorite illicit pleasures? Can decriminalization of pot help end austerity? To hash over these issues, Oksana is joined by Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, an Irish MP and cannabis legalization advocate.
RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 1 billion YouTube views benchmark.
The old expression about everything being bigger in Texas just got trumped by what’s happening in California. In my career as a reporter, I’ve been on more than a few drug raids and seen my fair share of marijuana plants. But nothing prepared me for what’s growing in northern California. As Mendocino Sheriff Tom Allman describes them, they’re “super-mega-steroid marijuana plants. We followed Sheriff Allman along on a raid near Ukiah where deputies had just discovered more than a hundred plants the size of giant Christmas trees, some reaching 15 feet high. It’s the latest trend in pot farms, or what are increasingly looking like pot plantations! So how’d they get so big? Sheriff Allman says it’s a combination of genetic modification, fertilizers, pesticides, California’s ideal growing climate and water, lots of water.
While the super plants we found in an illegal growing operation were in Mendocino County, they’re popping up all over the state, and much of the time on public land where illegal large-scale cultivation of marijuana is destroying local ecosystems. And, increasingly, it’s not locals who are farming the pot plants. Allman told me that Latin American, even European syndicates, have moved in to the back woods where they are growing far from prying eyes. This is a multi-billion dollar business and those who I spoke to used words like “crisis” and “out of control” to describe what’s going on here. Think about this — illegal marijuana farms in northern California are actually sucking the mighty Eel River dry, and that’s threatening the native salmon population.
While the diversion of water from rivers is a big concern, the use of toxic pesticides — some banned long ago in the U.S. — to keep anything and everything away from crops is also troubling. These pesticides are poisoning wildlife and contaminating the water supply. We also discovered that these chemicals show up in marijuana that’s not only headed for the black market, but in supplies due to be sold in California’s medical dispensaries.
Here in the U.S., we hold up Colorado and Washington as being models of future marijuana policy. Where they legalizes recreational marijuana, creating regulated and taxed systems, the majority of states are still trying to determine how to implement medicinal pot. In Uruguay, however, lawmakers have taken one big step towards creating a nationwide regulated marijuana industry, and they’ve done it despite the resistance of the people.
In Uruguay last month, members of the lower house of parliament passed a bill that could create the world’s first such nationwide regulated marijuana market, on a vote of 50-46. Next the bill will head to upper house later this year where it is expected to pass if the current momentum sustains.
The bill will create a system where residents can grow and possess marijuana, though they would be limited to purchasing 40 grams per month and could grow up to 6 plants at a time. It would establish marijuana growing collectives and dispensaries. Unlicensed possession or cultivation (black-market pot) would result in criminal charges, as it does now.
By Robert Foyle Hunwick
Motherboard October 9, 2013
The first thing you notice are the straws: long, bright, pink-and-purple-striped, with bent necks reminiscent of childhood parties. They’re all over the place, on benches, tables and trays, being passed around like lemonade. Otherwise, the room is exactly as you’d expect a private karaoke room would look like in Guilin, known as south China’s most beautiful city, if you were to wander in at two in the morning.
A rumpled Taiwanese businessman makes eye contact. As his friends gear up for the next big song, he enthusiastically bids me enter. There’s a lot of collar loosening and hugging, flabby, middle-aged male bellies and toasting. A couple of women have lost their tops. Everyone takes a big hit of the enormous lines on the tray, and then they ignore me.
A couple hours later, I’m in a very different part of the house. Not untypically for a Chinese KTV nightclub, it features a large, neon-soaked dance floor and several bars that no one is paying the least attention to. The main draw in this cavernous area is a network of concealed VIP rooms squirreled out back among a warren of identical corridors and floors accessible only to paying guests—and the very curious.
Down one of these hallways, there’s another party happening, this time with a more extreme crowd. They’re brighter-eyed and drunkenly energetic. It is a half-male, half-female crew, all around the same age. In front of a gigantic plasma TV blaring Korean pop videos, a young girl sallies forth to claim her song, watched by the stupefied group. The women are in black tops and skirts, the men are stripped to the waist and near skeletal thin; several are tattooed. All of them are off their heads on ketamine.
In this video Luke Rudkowski interviews Derrick Broze, founder of The Houston Free Thinkers. Derrick goes into detail about his dark past, using and selling crystal meth. Derrick is now a full time activist, organizing protest rallies, creating a sustainable community and doing everything in his power to show what an individual is capable of. We hope this video is helpful to anyone with an addiction problem and can show you how human beings can change for the better.
Here in the U.S., we hold up 
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